Qin Dynasty

Qin: The Qin dynasty was right in the middle of the Era of Warring States, a time where China was trying to find their identity. The Qin Dynasty adopted Legalist thinking’s. Legalism was based off the idea that everything needs to run through the government and anyone that believed otherwise or didn’t follow the rules was badly punished. The king of Qin, who was latter named The First Emperor, was Shih Huang-Di. A huge accomplishment of the First Emperor was that in only nine years he captured the six largest states in China. Once he did this that was when centralization got under way. He divided the country into administrative units the remained the same well after his time. He also invented the first standard units of money. The writing system was standardized so effectively that it is almost the same now as it was back then. This was all constructed to make China unified. A problem that kept coming up was that from the north the Mongols were invading. This caused the Qin Dynasty to construct the first parts of the Great Wall of China. Shih Huang-Di also had his bad side, in Legalism if you didn’t follow what the government wanted you got in serious trouble. He got into doing a lot of torture and harsh treatment to people. He could not stand the people who supported Confucsism and because of that he ordered a Burning of the Books in attempt to get rid of Confucsism. Tang Dynasty: The Tang Dynasty was one of the most brilliant periods of Chinese history. The Tang took over after the Sui Dynasty that left China in a terrible place. That was the first problem the Tang had to address, the reconstruction of China. The Tangs first concern was to help out the peasant tenants because the landowners were making them pay way too much. A thing the Sui Dynasty had was the well field system and the Tang adopted that. This really helped the economy get back to where it needed to be. The Tang also recreated a bureaucracy on Confucianerit system. The wealthy people could sometimes get by and not have to take the exam in order to get a government job but they were the only ones allowed to do that. There was an university that the Han started but now opened up to allow 30,000 students to go and study for the exams. The capital of the Tang was Changan and the Tang spread their borders north and northwest. They somehow managed to be peaceful with the Mongols and Turks. The Silk Road was still huge for the Tang because that’s where most of their trade happened. During the Tang Dynasty was the first time the Chinese made contact with the Japanese and the Japanese admired them. Japan: In the early parts of Japan history there really is not much to go by because they never wrote anything down. Japan also never really had any problems with any other people since they are on an island, there were no invaders. The imperial court was more of a symbol of religion than actual government. The feudal lords had the real power and also some clans had power. Latter on the shogun came along and he was the man in charge of the army. He might have been the figure head but he made all of the choices. Most of the Japanese culture can be traced back to Chinese sources which also went through Korea. The biggest things Japan took from China was Buddhism and writing. Japan picked and chose what they wanted from China and one big thing they did not take was their form of government.